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Earth Matters

Earth Week Puzzler #1

April 22nd, 2013 by Adam Voiland

Each month, Earth Observatory offers up a puzzling satellite image here on Earth Matters. In celebration of Earth Month 2013, we’re upping the ante. We are going to release a new puzzler image every day this week. The first image is above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us what part of the world we are looking at, when the image was acquired, and why the scene is interesting. We’ll post the answer to all five puzzlers at 6 p.m. EST on Friday, April 26.

How to answer. Your answer can be a few words or several paragraphs. (Try to keep it shorter than 200 words). You might simply tell us what part of the world an image shows. Or you can dig deeper and explain what satellite and instrument produced the image, what spectral bands were used to create it, or what is compelling about some obscure speck in the far corner of an image. If you think something is interesting or noteworthy, tell us about it.

The prize. We can’t offer prizes, but we can promise you credit and glory (well, maybe just credit). Later this week when we post annotated and captioned versions of the puzzler images as our Image of the Day, we will acknowledge the people who were first to correctly ID the images. We’ll also recognize people who offer the most interesting tidbits of information. Please include your preferred name or alias with your comment. If you work for an institution that you want us to recognize, please mention that as well.

Recent winners. If you’ve won the puzzler in the last few months, look at this week as a new challenge — can you get all five image locations?

Good luck!

This entry was posted
on Monday, April 22nd, 2013 at 10:50 am
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To me it looks like Fractals, like an earth version of a plants leaf and how it grows and multiplies in a fractal sort of way. At least I know the picture is of Earth. Hope within this century we will know if another is out there casting the shadows of life in it’s own system and it’s own beautiful ball of plasma at it’s center

According to me, small dots that are visible in picture are dust particles. May be camera lens of a satellite is dusty. And behind that there is a green grassland and the grooves indicate higher land of trees (the embossed part) and deeper part is land. Thank You.

My first impulse was rain forest from north east DRC or Cameroon. But it is unusual to see such steep grades there. More of rolling hills. In fact I am surprised to see slopes that seem to be the result of fairly recent erosion covered in trees. Normally we see this in dry climates where there is no vegetation to protect the land from erosion (i.e. Canyons of the western United States.) Also it is strange to have this much erosion on what appears to be a flat area. This leads me to believe that this must be topography caused not by erosion but by glacial ice. I have seen some topography like this in the Balkans. I would say somewhere that was covered by ice in the last ice age. Perhaps part of Iceland, Alaska or elsewhere in northern Canada?

Looks like a segment form the First Light for ISERV Pathfinder, Space Stations Newest ‘Eye’ on Earth, looking at the mouth of the Rio San Pablo in Veraguas, Panama, as it empties into the gulf of Montio image. on the Nasa Earth highlights webpage

Maybe it’s a false colour image of a desert in Australia with dry drainage gullies taken by LandSat7. It’s green because it’s not reflecting near IR due to the lack of moisture. The tiny pinpricks of grey could be the small, sparse vegetation.

Looks like a typical dendritic drainage pattern, maybe with a single mature river system in the center with much younger ones surrounding it. I wouldn’t say sand or desert just because these are clearly water erosion formations, not wind blown. Best guess, temperate forest near a passive plate margin (low up lift, medium rain fall). Central Russia?

There doesn’t seem to beenough relief for this photo to be rainforest of Brazil, or the Congo. At first, I thought rainforest in Indonesia, or Borneo, but again, these seem to be rolling hills caused by wearing down of the mountains, much like the southern appalachian mountains. I am guessing the southern appalachians of Tennessee, Alabama or Georgia.

This is the image of the Algae in the China’s Yellow Sea. Because of High Level of Nutrients like Nitrates in the Sea water coming from the Industrial Waste and the Ground water from the Over-fed Crops. It is in such a big area that it can be viewed from the space too.

I’m guessing an algae bloom, maybe in China since huge one is occurring right now off the coast of Quingdao. My second guess is a rainforest in Brazil or the forests of Ireland. I don’t know much about satellite imagery so I am not sure how it was photographed, but I promise to look it up after my final projects and finals are done!!

1) Part of the world: Crossed mountain shapes (double L shapes) with forest and small rivers on land with complex topography.
2) Time of image acquired: Daytime on green forest due to identify special spotted target by color or some sources (O2 output or CO2 input) from plants and/or trees on land)
3) Reason of interesting scene: To find new kinds of plants or trees (shown by white spots) through the forest, due to vegetations etc. on complicated crossed surface, which are obtained it as results of random distribution in low sites of river valley sites.

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